Samantha and Michael Bahil had around $50,000 in car and student debt between them when they took out a $20,000 loan for their wedding.
After the wedding, they wanted to buy a house but didn’t know how. So they took debt repayment seriously.
Now the fitness instructors are homeowners and have no debts besides their mortgage.
Samantha, 33, who goes by the name Sam, and Michael, 38, met at a Gold’s Gym in Albany, New York’s Capital District. Sam was training with Michael’s roommate at the time, and she and Michael began taking fitness classes together.
Sam was about to graduate from college and work as a waitress when she bought a new car: a 2012 Honda Civic. It added five figures of debt to her loan balance from SUNY Albany.
Michael had a bachelor’s degree and his own student debt from SUNY Oneonta and had moved to Albany to work for an entertainment company headquartered there. The company was hit hard by the release of digital music and the closure of its stores, and Michael did email marketing and web merchandising there before he was made redundant.
Realizing he had put on weight and needed a change, he joined a Gold’s Gym. He also found a job there, earning less than $10 an hour at the front desk.
From there, he went completely into fitness and became a certified personal trainer. Sam, who started working out at the gym herself, also got certified. In 2015, Michael bought a new car, a Subaru.
Fast forward to their wedding in July 2016. The couple took out a $20,000 loan to cover just over half the cost of a “standard large American wedding,” despite their existing debt.
“We had no financial knowledge,” admitted Michael. “We made mistakes.”
They covered the rest of the wedding themselves, setting aside money from every paycheck they could.
Just before the wedding, Michael fell ill and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. The regular treatments he needed would have cost $10,000 each, the couple said, had it not been for Michael’s health insurance and an assistance program.
After the wedding, they used their cash wedding gifts to pay off most of the $20,000 wedding loan. Two months later, they are committed to paying the rest of their debt.
Michael had gotten into running a gym and the couple were making around $100,000 combined as they crunched their balance by over $50,000.
Sam said she learned debt repayment techniques from YouTube videos and books like “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey. She joined the debt-free movement on social media.
The Bahils analyzed their spending and set a budget, cutting expenses where they could. They cut their grocery budget from $1,000 a month to $700. When friends invited them, they brought prepared meals to avoid ordering. After a few months, they cut their cable subscription.
“We needed to focus on not using boredom and weekends as an excuse to spend money,” Sam said.
Living “intentionally” helped them become debt-free in less than two years, in May 2018.
The following year, they said they had saved $40,000 to buy their first home, a 1,500 square foot Colonial-style home in the Albany area. They paid a 10% deposit.
They got a puppy, increased their emergency fund, replaced Sam’s car with a used car they bought with cash, and started new jobs at Orangetheory Fitness teaching classes and training clients. The jobs offered flexible hours and a higher hourly wage. For extra income, they both spend a few hours a week coaching clients outside the gym, and Michael has a second side-hustle as a DJ.
The Bahils recently celebrated five years without debt outside of their mortgage. They titled the post on their blog, A Financially Fit Life, “Lose Weight and Keep It Off.”
Their primary focus has been investing for retirement, and in recent years they’ve maxed out their Roth IRAs.
“We don’t have access to 401(k)s [through a job]so we take that burden on us and make sure we’re accountable for it,” Sam said.
Life is more laid back, with time to work out, read, watch TV (they still don’t have cable), and play with their pit bull mix, Max. If one of them has to wake up before dawn to teach a lesson, they have room in their schedule to take a nap.
And they travel, including an anniversary trip each year, usually to the Caribbean, always paying in full to avoid going into debt.
As a childless couple who already own a home, Sam said the main question now is what else should they do?
“It’s very cool that we can look into our future and look forward to it and be really excited about it,” she said. “We could pick up and move if we wanted, we could go on vacation if we wanted. It’s a totally different place than where we were before when we started.
Julia Barrett-Mitchell contributed to this story.
2023-06-13 16:27:26
#gym #instructors #debt #financially #fit #CNET
